General Motors quits sharing driving behavior with data brokers

GENERAl Motors said Friday (Mar 22) that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry.

The decision followed a New York Times report this month that GM had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. The drivers were enrolled – some unknowingly, they said – in OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in GM’s internet-connected cars that collected data about how the car had been driven and promised feedback and digital badges for good driving.

Some drivers said their insurance rates had increased as a result of the captured data, which GM shared with two brokers, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk. The firms then sold the data to insurance companies.

Since Wednesday, “OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer being shared with LexisNexis or Verisk,” a GM spokesperson, Malorie Lucich, said in an emailed statement. “Customer trust is a priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies.”

Romeo Chicco, a Florida man whose insurance rates nearly doubled after his Cadillac collected his driving data, filed a complaint seeking class-action status against GM, OnStar and LexisNexis this month.

An internal document, reviewed by the Times, showed that as of 2022, more than 8 million vehicles were included in Smart Driver. An employee familiar with the program said the company’s annual revenue from Smart Driver was in the low millions of dollars. NYT